


come on apathy!

by mirthworm



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Brokeback Mountain References, Dean Winchester Has Abandonment Issues, Drug Dealer Dean Winchester, Gothic, Hope vs. Despair, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Recreational Drug Use, Stoner Castiel (Supernatural)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2020-04-29
Packaged: 2021-01-15 07:45:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21249881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mirthworm/pseuds/mirthworm
Summary: sleepy decrepit pnw gothic, featuring our two best boys looking worse for wear. mercury retrograde in scorpio should carry this heavily then huh.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> i wanted to revisit some new feelings in old characters. they are nostalgic to me, and this is a love letter to them and to myself. i feel obligated to finish this story for some reason. whats your favorite nostalgic or slightly sad thing?

he’s hesitant if anything. 

the hum of electricity bounces off his eardrums, his fingers brushing the etheric body, an inch away from his skin. “you owe me.” he feels overindulgent talking about his needs. in the presence of someone so susceptible to destruction he’s grateful he’s not falling apart at his feet. its trivial, a small price to pay to come face to face. 

he makes an event out of it. freights about it days on end. their deal is simple. fuck, weigh out the drugs, and part ways. their interactions goes smoothly, like a well oiled machine as cas once defined it. externally, of course,

on the inside dean was debilitated. 

cas never stood as the sentimental type. he was constantly moving forward. he came out of sticky situations unscathed, ready with a joint in one hand and a lighter in the other. dean knew it wasn’t to spite others. cas was more of his own fucking person than half the people dean had the pleasure of crossing paths with his entire life. no sentence from cas ever included reminiscing of his childhood, or his parents. 

believe dean, he tried to talk family once and it was ninety nine percent him bumbling about sammy, or their dad, or mom. castiel sat there patiently with the slowest burning joint known to man in his hand. moments of that caliber had been more frequent between them, giving dean the opportunity to spend time and also drugs on him. dean’s time for recuperating after witnessing castiel’s intense presence was cut in half, though. and his profit. 

“you told me we had a deal.” cas says flatly. its like everytime cas is, well, cas, dean ends up with a knot of self doubt in his chest. this is business, he tells himself, you are running a business. his fingers twitch. everytime he touches cas it’s the only thing that matters.

in the throes of it, when cas doesn’t have anything lit between his lips, dean still feels dying embers on them. all of cas, his edges, his sharp attitude, bend under his touch. there is no way he gets high off his own supply - it cuts into profit and makes him susceptible to fucking up. But he feels out of body, lifted, when cas touches him back. it passes through him straight into his nerves and shoots them to hell. 

There’s a moment of clarity in each passing glance and languid, stone eyed stare cas gives him. there’s ignorance of the past and the future, something purportedly present and completely falsified in the way he looks at him. dean can’t help but chase after what he suspects is his full attention. he trusts in the reflection in cas’ glassy eyes, hoping they are a two way mirror where he’s seen. He hopes to god he’s seen. 

cas pushes all the air out of his chest as he curls over dean’s body. he never gets there, the joint is half finished and resting in the ashtray. He wishes, sometimes, the smoke would be thick enough and eclipse them both. the analog clock beams through the room, 5:55. Streams of orange light reach confidently to the wall opposite the window straight as a ruler measuring the time before cas picks up and leaves.


	2. 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> hmmm im not sure what im doing but im really really hopeful

He had grown through the tarmac of his hometown like a weed, converse shoes torn so badly the water would have made his roots rot and his leaves discolor. He remembers the ceramic pots in his untended garden. Mom didn't have the heart cut the shoots closing in on their fences. The pathway always gave him such trouble, it wasn't like smoke, the long limbs of tender leaves hanging over the path whipping lightly at his face. He didn't bother pushing them away. One day, when the leaves grew especially broad under his mom's negligence, one refused to curl away from his face and placed a cut right onto his cheek. 

So much for love, he thought. He cut the leaves back after that day. The greenery looked robust and untameable, his tiny hands working at the base of the blades. Soon the pathway became an afterthought, a blur. No reason to go slowly through the overgrowth anymore. That day, and each day afterwards, he could see the tiles stretching out to the sides of the house. The roofing, the trim, the bottom of the stairs and the frames of the windows, rotting, like they had been sitting in water.

Before there is light, there is wet. On the side of his face a pool is forming of his own saliva. It doesn’t smell like his own mouth. cas didn’t leave and this isn’t his spit curling around his orbital bone. his head is spinning, a giant ice disc on a frozen river. He retires from the second wave of wet that’s descending onto his sheets and eventually his mattress cover. Out of all the things he’s compromised in the name of efficiency, a mattress cover was not an option - it was a necessity. 

A series of shivers run up his spine, the coldness arriving at the back of his neck just as quickly as the heat from his bed has left. He sits up. The source of drool is slowly rising and falling in his peripheral vision. 

He didn’t leave.

It occurs to him now, that he's never been in cas'’ presence unconscious. 

The only time he’d ever shared details about his life had been on his balcony after a particularly brutal 24 hours of it. Half his head was shaved, dean didn’t know why, and it created an odd profile against the trees and mountains. He faced cas, cas faced the driveway, leaning against the rail like someone had put him on pause mid-sway. 

He’d been at a party sixteen hours before, got drugged eight hours before, and slept through the tearing of fabric and shoving of limbs. Three, he said, three almost had me. cas held up the number of assailants with his own fingers, cutting through the winding clouds of Pall Mall perfume. In between puffs he’d held his breath in for so long, dean imagined his diaphragm was the bright orange of a life jacket. dean knew, he tried that before, when he was scared. He looked down from where he was sitting, knees open in a V with a tray of his product in his lap. The nose of cas’ shoe was tapping the tile beneath them over and over, unconvinced he was standing on something solid. 

And now?

dean fully turns to him, bare chested, hair on his arms standing up from the slight breeze in the room. cas' body is still besides his rhythmic breathing, the trickle of drool rolling towards him. Placid. dean thinks. He pulls the blanket up to cas' shoulders. He takes all the product in the room and puts it away. He checks cas' bag to make sure he has what he came for. There's the heavy implication these small deeds are previously unprecedented. It hangs over dean's head like a bomb. 

"C’mere." There it is. The drift of his voice. The anchor in dean's stomach. The heat. cas props himself up on the pillow, the wrinkles in his shirt matching the side of his face indented with the folds of the sheets. The room regains some decency, like the fucking for drugs never happened. His feet move towards the bed. It’s untimely. 

The pads of cas’s fingertips rest at the nape of his neck. It is hard to believe those fingers will be part of the same hand holding his head against the mattress. Feather light touching twisting into a steel grip, he pulls dean so close to his face he can see the golden fuzz on his cheeks and chin. dean tastes sleep, sort of bitter but not the worst, and eventually they are both buzzing. He’s quick to shove his pants down to his ankles, and cas pushes himself further down the mattress. If dean didn’t have drugs, if cas didn’t have a drug problem, this wouldn’t be possible. But there’s a delicate reality contained in between those four walls, only revealed when the desire is the same, the goal forgotten. The only price to pay is having broken it by forcing it to the surface.

And some might say, dean, you're stupid. You're throwing away a good chance of finding somebody who isn't going to look at you as the means to an end of a dimebag or a handful of pills. The air around him is thin and presses down on his shoulders like concrete. Coarse and dense and invisible. cas takes him into his mouth. His legs want to run so far right now. And only ever when he does this, pressing his pale body to the bed. There is no force. There's only cas, guiding him along to eventually fake him out.

"I love this." He says, the minutes stretch out long. cas murmurs softly into his thigh. A little lost, he reaches for the half finished joint. Of course.


End file.
